Andrew Scheer, Conservative middleman

In a leadership race dominated by a celebrity candidate who plays to crowds and some polarizing either-or positions on identity politics, Andrew Scheer sells himself as Mr. Compromise — the candidate who can unite Tories on the right and on the left.

“I call myself a full-spectrum Conservative,” says Scheer. “I think the leader should always try to find common ground between all the different kinds of Conservatives.”

Scheer’s policy platform is built on CPC bedrock: He would scrap the federal government’s plan to price carbon, balance the budget, make Employment Insurance parental and maternity benefits tax-free and offer a tax credit to families who send their children to independent schools or who home-school them. And he plans to vote against M-103, the Liberals’ anti-Islamophobia motion.

The former Commons Speaker says that what the Conservative Party of Canada needs most right now is to concentrate on the things that unite Conservatives, rather than the wedge issues that divide them. He says the many MPs who have endorsed him see him as a team player who’s not going to impose his own ideology on the caucus.

“They see someone who both sides of the spectrum can be excited about getting behind,” says Scheer, who has been endorsed by 23 members of Parliament and a handful of former MPs, senators and provincial politicians.

Enjoying beer on a snowy afternoon at Mulligan’s Golf Bar before returning for votes in the House of Commons, Scheer insists he’s the only candidate talking about how to win in 2019 — and that starts with rebuilding the pride Conservative supporters used to feel in voting for the party — a pride that took a beating in 2015.

“I got the sense in the last election that even some people who voted for us, you know, might not have taken a lawn sign. It was a negative campaign, it was difficult campaign,” says Scheer candidly. He says he wants to be known for running a positive, forward-looking campaign, citing as his inspirations Ronald Reagan, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and Stephen Harper in the 2006 campaign.

Scheer may be down on the 2015 playbook, but he refuses to publicly stick a pin in his fellow leadership candidates — like Kellie Leitch and Steven Blaney — who have been drawing from the same well.

“I’ll just say I believe that a positive approach always does better,” he says.

“So I believe I’m the best candidate to take our conservative message and reach a broader audience of Canadians.”

But Scheer’s tolerance only goes so far. He’s running for the leadership of the Conservative party — and TV businessman and rival candidate Kevin O’Leary, he says, is not any sort of Conservative he recognizes.

“Honestly, I don’t know what positions he holds that you can call conservative. He’s very good at [making] brash statements that pays to get a soundbite, but I haven’t seen anything on the substantive side that shows he shares those values,” says Scheer.

“I haven’t seen where he would fit on the conservative spectrum because I haven’t seen anything that would indicate so far that he is one.”

He says he hadn’t really thought about the leadership until he spent some time as House leader. Had the Conservatives won in 2015, he says, he would have run for the Speaker’s gig again.

Scheer grew up in Ottawa and moved to Regina after meeting his wife, Jill. Fed up with the long-distance relationship and just a few courses away from completing his B.A., Scheer followed Jill to Regina where he worked at an insurance brokerage firm and on the Saskatchewan Party provincial campaign in 2003. After establishing a good rapport with voters, Scheer himself was encouraged to run for a seat in Parliament in 2004.

While Scheer has mostly stayed out of the line of fire to date, he was criticized by Leitch as an ‘elitist’ — the candidate’s favoured code word for her rivals — for launching his campaign in the National Press Theatre in Ottawa, a criticism Scheer says he’s still struggling to understand.

“It was a bizarre criticism and to this day, I still don’t really understand,” says Scheer.

He says it was convenient for MPs who were supporting him to join him at the theatre, and it was the best way to reach as many people as possible. The very next day, Scheer held an official rally in Regina. He pointed out that some candidates launched in areas where there was not easy access to francophone media, so they may have had other reasons for avoiding the press theatre.

Scheer says at least two candidates have mentioned his campaign launch. “If that’s the most egregious thing they can point to, they’re grasping at straws and maybe should focus on their own message.”